From policy to practice: declines in monitoring and Pacific salmon conservation in Canada

Canada's Wild Salmon Policy (WSP) offers a framework for conserving the genetic and geographic diversity of wild Pacific salmon. A cornerstone of the Policy is the annual assessment of endangered status for each Conservation Unit (CU). We evaluated the extent of monitoring as a foundation for WSP implementation and its goal of safeguarding salmon diversity. Publicly reported annual counts of spawning populations have declined by 32% since the Policy's release, driven largely by reductions in high-quality surveys. Synchrony among spawning populations within CUs is low and variable, underscoring the limitations of relying on indicator populations to represent CU-level trends. Nearly half of Canada's Pacific salmon CUs with publicly available data currently lack sufficient information to assess status using the recent generational metric, with 27 additional CUs having insufficient data since the Policy's release. This erosion of population-level spawner data compromises the ability to detect biological change and inform timely conservation responses. Rebuilding broad and representative monitoring programs is essential to fulfill the WSP's core commitment to conserving wild salmon diversity.